UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES

Spirituality à la carte

Derek Thomas

The cover of this week’s Newsweek magazine says, “Spirituality in America.” Inside, in a dozen pages, a special report —“Spirituality 2005” — examines diverse expressions of spirituality in America: Trappist monks in Massachusetts practicing meditation taught by a Zen master; Birkenstocked West-Virginians and members of Christians for the Mountains who keep chickens, turkeys, rabbits and geese, but get upset when trees get felled because “The earth is the Lord’s”; Californian ex-Southern Baptists who have found peace in Islam; a child of Jim Crow who went to Tibet and found herself by learning to let go; and serious minded young Catholics for whom “Hail-Mary” is more than a play at the end of a football game.

We also meet Bridgette O'Brien, a graduate student in the University of Florida's new program in “Religion and Nature.” According to the magazine, “Her worship consists of composting, recycling and daily five-mile runs; she describes herself as ‘the person that picks up earthworms off the sidewalk after the rain to make sure they don't get stepped on’.”

The article claims that 79% of those polled describe themselves as “spiritual” (of whom 33% were evangelical); 20% have changed faith since their childhood; 40% feel closer to God when they are praying alone; 67% are convinced that heaven or hell awaits them after death, but 24% don’t believe that there is a heaven or a hell; and 79% (8 out of every ten) believe that someone of another faith can attain salvation and go to heaven.

The numbers are staggering! They also reflect a confusion as to what we mean by “spirituality” or “spiritual.” Books on spirituality emerge by the truck load. The sixteenth century contemplatives Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila are more popular today than they have ever been. In an age where experience usurps doctrine, the mystical approach—“the close your eyes and hum” method—is king. We are children of Schleiermacher, the nineteenth century liberal theologian who insisted that religion is “feeling” rather than “believing” (he said a whole lot more, but this will suffice for now).

Spirituality as represented by these examples is simply the expression of man’s religion, something which the Bible suggests is innate. Romans 1 declares that the natural man—not the Adam before the Fall but you and me since the Fall—is constantly bombarded by the divine presence in the created order around us but our propensity to sin turns that revelation into something else—an idol. No matter how we protest that God does not exist, as Calvin so eloquently puts it in the opening pages of the Institutes,  “though they struggle with their own convictions, and would fain not only banish God from their minds, but from heaven also, their stupefaction is never so complete as to secure them from being occasionally dragged before the divine tribunal” (I.iv.2). Spirituality from this point of view is nothing more than man’s idolatry, his worst crime against God—turning the truth of God into something else.

David Wells, author of a trilogy of important critiques of contemporary Christianity in No Place for Truth, God in the Wasteland and Losing our Virtue posits two kinds of spirituality present within evangelicalism, "Reformation or classical spirituality" and what he calls a "postmodern spirituality." The latter is understood to have open and accessible interactions with the institutions and impulses of contemporary culture. Borrowing from the work of sociologist Donald Miller, Wells sees "postmodern spirituality" at work in emerging, extra–denominational "new paradigm churches" characterized by three modes of thinking—the therapeutic, the individualistic, and the anti–establishmentarian. As conduits for "postmodern spirituality," argues Wells, these churches "appear to be succeeding, not because they are offering an alternative to our modern culture, rather because they are speaking with its voice, mimicking its moves.

And what is biblical or classical spirituality?

Yes, it consists in prayer, meditation, the inner life of the soul, personal devotional exercises like fasting as well as corporate gatherings on the Lord’s Day, in fellowship with God’s people, in confession of sin and encouragements to perseverance.

First and most importantly, true spirituality, biblical spirituality, reformed spirituality is God-centered. If God—the Trinitarian God Father, Son and Holy Spirit-- isn’t at the heart of our spirituality then we have something that is a hybrid. Anything other than this is idolatry no matter how profound our experiences may be.

Second, biblical spirituality is Word-based, Bible-based, committed to a view of the Bible as God’s infallible Word written. All true experience of the Spirit is to be measured by and submissive to what the Bible teaches. God makes his will known to us through his Word read, explained, and understood. Paul could say of the God-breathed Scriptures, that they are “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work”  (2 Tim 3:16-17). One such “good work” is the cultivation of spiritual life and vitality, and here the Scriptures must inform, motivate, encourage, and shape. That will mean, at the most basic level, that Christians who desire spiritual renewal must, to cite Cranmer, “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” what the Bible has to say.

Third, biblical spirituality is church-based and church focused. In the individualism of our time, the corporate dimension of the Christian life, the dynamic and rhythm of a seven day cycle which begins with corporate worship and rest from daily work and routine, must shape our spirituality. Anything else—the “me in my small corner and you in yours” mentality is not an expression of biblical spirituality.

Had Newsweek adopted these principles the results, of course would have been considerably different. Instead, it presented a smorgasbord of attempts to “do” spirituality: the good, the bad and the ugly.